The operation of many businesses, nonprofit organizations, government institutions, and other organizations turn out an endless stream of paper documents that need to be placed in long term storage for future use. The storage of documents is quite expensive. Often times an organization typically may have to lease expensive space just for filing cabinets to store documents. In addition, depending upon the importance of the documents, fire prevention equipment may be installed in such spaces, thereby increasing the cost of storage.
In response, many organizations prefer to convert paper documents into digital form for long term storage in a server or other mass data storage device. In order to store documents so that they may be easily located in the future, several indices are identified in each document that are associated with the document as metadata that facilitate document searching. In order to identify the metadata in each document, a manual process is typically employed in which an individual examines the document and identifies the metadata within the document. Such a manual process is very expensive and thus hinders the ability of many organizations to convert their paper documents into digital documents.